Travel light
I travel with very little baggage.
- I typically travel with my backpack and a single small duffle that is small enough to count as a personal item <link> (though I’m using it as my carryon). I keep the duffle packed, and ready to go, so that I’m equipped with all the peripherals I want to travel with, even if I have 0 time to pack.
- I basically never check bags.
Prioritize high-quality sleep over reducing travel time
There’s work that I can do on planes, as long as I’m well rested. So I generally don’t try to minimize the time that I’m on a plane or in the airport. Instead I focus on maximizing the amount of time that I’m alert and well-rested.
- First and foremost, when selecting flights, choose flights that allow me to get a full night sleep the night before.
- When I have an early flight out of SFO, I’ll book an airbnb right next to the airport, and sleep there the night before.
- This means that I can sleep in for an extra 45 minutes (the time that it would otherwise take me to uber to the airport in the morning).
- And because I’m not time-pressured, I can take the BART to get down there instead of an uber. So although I’m paying $80 for a room, this is displacing ~$60 that I otherwise would pay for a rideshare from Berkeley to SFO. So I’m on net paying ~$30 for being able to sleep somewhat longer (after accounting for the shorter uber ride to the airport from the airBnB).
- When I travel to Europe, I’ll often break long travel days into two easier travel days. Instead of booking a connecting flight to the city to which I’m traveling, I’ll book a flight to some city in Europe (often in England), an airbnb right next to the airport, and a flight to my final destination for the next day.
- This way, instead of having a 17 or 18 hour travel day, I’ll have a 10 hour travel day, collapse in exhaustion, sleep in a real bed, awake well rested, and then have another (usually shorter) travel day.
- when traveling to Europe, I’ll sometimes adjust my schedule to close-to-UK-time, before I leave. I’ll stay up later and later each night, shifting to a mostly nocturnal schedule where I’m waking up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, local time. I’ll book the latest international flight I can get. So the day before my flight, I go to sleep at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning, wake up in the evening, and immediately go to the airport. While most of my co-passengers are sleeping on the plane, I have an alert, focused day of work. I’ll have an extra long travel day, and go to sleep in the late afternoon of my destination time’s zone. I’ll sleep for unusually long and wake up in the early morning of my local timezone.